[openssl-dev] OpenSSL offers reviewers for draft-saarinen-blake2

[Markku-Juhani Olavi Saarinen]

Dear RFC-ISE and others,

We submitted the specification of "The BLAKE2 Cryptographic Hash and
MAC" as an informational RFC on February 1, 2015. The document is
currently in its third revision after various contributors have read
it and pointed out minor typographic errors in the original text.
Therefore the editorial quality of the document should be sufficient
at this point. The CFRG was also informed about the existence of the
document. However the document is still in "Finding Reviewers" stage
of the RFC process.
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-saarinen-blake2-03

Numerous real-life implementations and applications using BLAKE2
exist, and BLAKE2 is a de facto industry standard hash function.
Therefore the CFRG IETF process has little to contribute to the design
of the algorithm and we, as editors and algorithm designers, see the
current Internet Draft as a final specification. This is why the
document was put out as an independent submission like many other
cryptographic algorithms. See https://blake2.net/

Recently the OpenSSL development community has expressed renewed
interest in having the document finalized as an RFC and they seem to
consider this to be a prerequisite of BLAKE2's adoption into the main
branch of OpenSSL (although this has not historically been the case
for all algorithms). This would especially help in including BLAKE2 in
various possible TLS ciphersuites. TLS appears to especially require
new PRF and MAC options.

If you are still seeking reviewers, you may find Yoav Nir's comments
below. There appears to be significant industry pressure to help this
document to obtain its RFC number and the open development community
is willing to offer any assistance required. Note that
draft-saarinen-blake2 this is *not* a protocol specification, just a
"FYI" specification for the Internet Community about this particular
independent cryptographic primitive.

You may approach me (the editor of draft-saarinen-blake2) privately if
you require additional reviewers or commentary but want to avoid the
openssl-dev mailing list.

Best Regards,
- markku

Dr. Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen <mjos at iki.fi>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yoav Nir <ynir.ietf at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 10:15 AM
Subject: Re: [openssl-dev] [openssl.org #3897] request: add BLAKE2
hash function (let's kill md5sum!)
To: openssl-dev at openssl.org


That shouldn’t be too difficult (finding reviewers, I mean).

Is the ISE asking for volunteers to review? What kind of volunteers?
IMO what a reviewer needs to be able to say is:
 - The document is clear (you can implement based on this)
 - The algorithm might be useful in the IETF
 - The security claims are sufficient to what IETF protocols need
 - The security claims are backed up by either peer-reviewed academic
papers or equivalent

So there’s a lot of people who can do all that. You don’t even need
real cryptographers, although having at least one would be good. What
is holding things up?

Yoav


On Jun 11, 2015, at 11:50 AM, Jean-Philippe Aumasson
<jeanphilippe.aumasson at gmail.com> wrote:

The status of the draft is unchanged ("Finding Reviewers"). Perhaps
OpenSSL can speed up the review process.

BLAKE2 has a keyed (aka MAC/PRF) mode, so it may also replace
Poly1305. A BLAKE2 MAC can be customized wrt key or tag size, and can
provide the highest security level for a give key/tag size
combination.